The Frogs – Kiln Theatre, London (LAST CHANCE TO SEE)

This latest offering from a pared-down Spymonkey team tackles Ancient Greek comedy, as well as some introspective soul-searching.

Spymonkey Does The Frogs

Wasn’t I just talking recently about the joys of very unexpected theatre? Oh yes, I was.  So I don’t think it will surprise you to learn that I enjoyed my first Spymonkey production very much.  It wasn’t actually Spymonkey that drew me to it, it was The Frogs themselves.  Or rather the idea of seeing what a contemporary adaptation of an Ancient Greek comedy would be like.  I’ve seen an Ancient Greek tragedy or two (Antigone keeps popping up, for one).  But the comedies are much less performed.  Why is that?

Perhaps, for a start, because there are fewer of them.  A lot of Ancient Greek theatre was actually a kind of offering to the gods.  Or more specifically to Dionysus at his annual Athenian festival the Lenaia.  From there it was accidents of history which passed some plays down to us and destroyed others.  We have 6-7 complete plays by Aeschylus.  19 by Euripides.  And 11 by Aristophanes.  Overall more tragedy than comedy survived – those ones by Aristophanes are more or less it.

And the comedy seems to date a bit more quickly.  We can still connect to the themes of Greek drama.  Fate, hubris, moral imperatives, all that jazz.  Whereas the comedies were a bit more topical.  The Frogs is a case in point.  Written in 405BC, it pokes fun at Greek politics, society, and the state of theatre.  To keep up with the ending you need to be well versed in the Greek dramatists in a way that audiences today are not.

All this to say that I found The Frogs a very interesting choice.  How would an adaptation work? What would they keep and what would they change? If you’re familiar at all with Spymonkey, you will surmise that they treated very little as sacred, supplanted almost all of the original text with physical comedy, personal references and audience engagement, and yet somehow managed to retain the spirit of the original work.

The Frogs (And Spymonkey) Introspect

The Spymonkey version describes The Frogs as history’s first double act.  That is perhaps the case.  The plot involves the foppish Dionysus entering the underworld with his servant Xanthias.  Dionysus’s mission is to locate and bring back the poet Euripides, who had died in 406BC and left Greek tragedy in an apparently lamentable state.  There’s a lot of humour at the expense of the god, before he redeems himself at the end by chairing a debate between Aeschylus and Euripides.

The Spymonkey version is also something of a double act.  In fact, as we learn, only a double act of the original Spymonkey company is left: Toby Park and Aitor Basauri.  Petra Massey has moved on, and Stephan Kreiss unfortunately died in 2021.  The premise of this adaptation (by Chris Grose) is that Park and Basauri are about to throw in the towel until they get an offer too good to refuse. But can they continue without their collaborators? This self-referential and existential angle reminded me somewhat of The Last Show Before We Die which I saw recently: it’s a should-we-go-on-or-shouldn’t-we?

The show starts predictably enough.  With frogs, in fact.  A chorus of them, just like there should be.  The characters of Dionysus and Xanthias are introduced and all seems normal enough.  But it isn’t long before we veer off into all sorts of weird and wonderful tangents.  And I should mention that this is not just a double act, either.  Park and Basauri are joined by a third: Jacoba Williams. She has wonderful, fantastical costumes playing all kinds of mythical beings (and one anatomically detailed Herakles). The wonderful costumes and set are by Lucy Bradridge.

This is a messy, chaotic piece of theatre. At times the trio dig so deep into the scenes that they become uncomfortable. But grief, which seems to be what started it all, is messy, chaotic and uncomfortable. Overall there is a good balance between the serious and the silly. I haven’t laughed so much at the theatre in a while. And not taking anything seriously (except the serious bits) is a hallmark of Aristophanes, so unlike recent adaptations I’ve seen, this one works. I will be interested to see where Spymonkey go to from here.

Salterton Arts Review’s rating: 3.5/5

The Frogs on until 2 March 2024